ervals awakened by as many more. A striking spectacle, the passage
of a big river steamer in the night; you hear, fast approaching, a
labored pant; suddenly, around the bend, or emerging from behind an
island, the long white monster glides into view, lanterns gleaming on
two lines of deck, her electric searchlight uneasily flitting to and
fro, first on one landmark, then on another, her engine bell sharply
clanging, the measured pant developing into a burly, all-pervading
roar, which gradually declines into a pant again--and then she
disappears as she came, her swelling wake rudely ruffling the moonlit
stream.

We caught up with a large lumber raft this morning, descending from
Pittsburg to Cincinnati. The half-dozen men in charge were housed
midway in a rude little shanty, and relieved each other at the
sweeps--two at bow, and two astern. It is an easy, lounging life, most
of the way, with some difficulties in the shallows, and in passing
beneath the great bridges. They travel night and day, except in the
not infrequent wind-storms blowing up stream; and it will take them
another week to cover the three hundred miles between this and their
destination. Far different fellows, these commonplace raftsmen of
to-day, from the "lumber boys" of a half-century or more ago, when the
river towns were regularly "painted red" by the men who followed the
Ohio by raft or flatboat. Life along shore was then more picturesque
than comfortable.

Later, we stopped on the Ohio shore to chat with a group of farmers
having a Sunday talk, their seat a drift log, in the shade of
a willowed bank. They proved to be market gardeners and
fruit-growers--well-to-do men of their class, and intelligent in
conversation; all of them descendants of the sturdy New Englanders who
settled these parts.

While the others were discussing small fruits with these transplanted
Yankees, who proved quite as full of curiosity about us as we
concerning them, I went down shore a hundred yards, struggling through
the dense fringe of willows, to photograph a junk-boat just putting
off into the stream. The two rough-bearded, merry-eyed fellows at the
sweeps were setting their craft broadside to the stream--that "the
current might have more holt of her," the chief explained. They were
interested in the kodak, and readily posed as I wished, but wanted to
see what had been taken, having the common notion that it is like
a tintype camera, with results at once attainable